BuySmarter

Article Sidebar

Main Article Content

HHS, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Administration, BUYSMARTER Solution Architect at Nationwide IT Services, Inc.

Abstract

Session Description: BUYSMARTER is a transformative, data-driven initiative leveraging the collective purchasing power ($24B/year) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to secure lower prices, achieve operational efficiencies, and generate cost savings on goods and services.

BUYSMARTER ‘s proof of concept used Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) technology to analyze departmental requirements based on current HHS-wide spend data. This helps identify opportunities to consolidate contract vehicles across agencies within HHS to leverage overlapping requirements at a significant cost savings for the federal government.

BUYSMARTER is positive initiative that is driving cultural change in support of HHS Reimagine. It is intended to focus on utilization of new and emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence and robotics, to analyze spend across HHS to make better informed decisions about price conscious purchasing in order to achieve: • Collaborative, collective, and coordinated forecasting across HHS that leverages buying power to generate savings through bulk purchasing and effective spend tracking • Organizational alignment that eliminates waste and risk through improved transparency and accountability • An acquisition organizational structure that is cohesive across HHS and operates in an efficient and effective

Lori Ruderman, Director of FedResponse Services for the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ Program Support System serves as the Project Management Office Lead for HHS ReImagine BuySmarter. BuySmarter is an innovative new HHS-wide program to use technology to streamline and modernize federal acquisitions across the Department to achieve significant economies of scale and gain Department-wide efficiencies. Ms. Ruderman has over 30 years’ experience in diverse range of leadership and management roles. With a Master’s Degree in Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling, Ms. Ruderman spent more than 20 years of her career serving in the healthcare space. During the course of her career to-date, Ms. Ruderman has served as the director of a not-for-profit health program and has served as a hospital administrator for two different healthcare systems before joining the federal government in 2008. Since entering public service, Ms. Ruderman has spent the past ten years in the federal Shared Services environment with the majority of that time focused on federal acquisitions.

Ms. Ruderman brings a passion and innovative energy to this unique opportunity to revolutionize acquisitions for the Department’s $24B in annual spend on goods and services.

Senior Operations Leader bringing more than 20 years’ experience across Healthcare, Service Industry, Manufacturing, Transactional Businesses, Federal Government, and Non-Profit industries in the deployment of small and large scale Business Transformations, Business Unit Leadership, Lean Transformation, Operational Excellence, Large Scale Program Management Office (PMO), Revenue Generation/Cost Reduction Initiatives, Strategic Planning & Execution, Executive Coaching, Operational Merger Leadership, and Business Turnaround deployments. HHS BUYSMARTER Solution Architect: Principal designer of the overall BUYSMARTER solution for HHS, an entirely new way for HHS to combine its $24B in spend on services and supplies to leverage its vast buying power to drive best value and best pricing for all contracted goods and services.

Call for Papers

Telehealth and Medicine Today (TMT) publishes articles on a continuous basis. As articles are accepted, they are published to ensure timely and accurate reflections of developments to assist building rapid consensus and adoption by the community.